Some of our favorite garden vegetables can be real space hogs. Even with larger gardens, we might still hesitate to allow one or two crops to take up so much real estate. Whether you garden in a container on the deck or just want to contain the sprawl to a smaller area, it’s fairly easy to get big yields of beans, cucumbers, peas, and even squash from a small footprint.

Start With Compact Varieties

Many winter and summer squashes are available in space-saving bushier plants. While you won’t likely find a Hubbard squash in a true bush growth habit, many squash options are available with shorter vines and smaller fruits that allow productivity in less space. For example, ‘Sweet Mama’ hybrid winter squash produces beautiful, mid-sized 3-4 pound fruits on compact, semi-bush vines, saving space. 'Butterbaby' hybrid mini butternuts are another compact variety, with shorter vines more suitable for raised beds. 

Many hybrids have been bred not only to be more disease-resistant but also more compact, reflecting the trend toward smaller yards and gardens. But sometimes, the listing isn’t all that clear. Here’s a good tip: check the spacing requirements. A squash variety recommended for planting six feet apart is a large, sprawling vine. If the spacing is listed at two or three feet, it’s much more compact. This trick works not only for vining plants but also for any larger vegetable or flower crop. If the description mentions being well-suited for containers, that’s another clue.

Ensure Optimum Growing Conditions

With any garden plant, whether flowers, herbs, or vegetables, we get more of what we want, be it foliage, flowers, or tasty produce, when the plant is happy and healthy. To maximize production in small spaces, we need to provide optimum conditions for the plant. Most especially, that means enough sunlight, moisture, and possibly some extra nutrients (fertilizer).

Sunlight

For most vegetables, high production begins with sunlight, at least 6-8 hours per day. A squash or cucumber plant that doesn’t get enough sunlight isn’t able to grow and produce as well as one that does. Think of it like an energy budget of sorts. Maintaining the plant's basic life processes requires energy. Growing new shoots and leaves takes energy. Flowering requires more energy, and producing a tasty cucumber, bean, or zucchini takes even more energy. A lot more. If those harvestable crops weren’t high in energy, we wouldn’t eat them. 

When we limit the amount of sunlight the plant can access, we limit the energy it gets. When our bank account doesn’t have enough money, we can’t do everything we’d like. The same goes for a plant. If it isn’t getting enough light, it can’t do all the things, like grow, bloom, or make fruits, that it (and we) want.

Moisture

Water is another huge opportunity to optimize growth. Plants use water for nearly every function. Like us, water is in all their cells, used for nutrient transport and even for cooling. A plant that isn’t getting enough water can’t properly take up nutrients through its roots or move them around to where they are needed.

Most of our garden vegetables like an evenly moist soil, and the squashes, cukes, and beans are no exception. Use your finger and stick it an inch deep to feel the soil. If the soil feels dry, it’s time to water. If it feels damp and cool, the plant is probably alright for the time being. 

Remember that plants grown in containers, and to a lesser extent in raised beds, will need more frequent watering than those grown directly in the ground. You may end up watering a containerized plant daily, or even twice a day in hot weather. Pay close attention to soil moisture, and you’ll have higher yields.

Fertilizer

Growing vigorous, healthy plants in small spaces and maximizing their yields often means adding some nutrients, aka fertilizer, to their soil or container. If they’ve got enough sun and moisture, the last leg of the triangle is plant nutrients. 

Many of us are gardening in containers or tucking plants into small spots where we wouldn’t bother to get a soil test. That hole between the boxwoods where you are planting a squash, or the patio planter with a trellis that will hopefully be covered in peas this spring. So, how do you know when to fertilize, how much, and with what?

Keeping it simple is the best way. In spring, after plants have a pair or two of true leaves (foliage that looks like the plant, not like a seed leaf), begin fertilizing with a balanced product. All-purpose or balanced fertilizers have an even ratio of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. You’ll see numbers on the bag like 5-5-5, or 10-10-10. These fertilizers are normally appropriate for the entire growing season. 

Whichever fertilizer you choose, follow the directions on the label as to how often, and how much to apply.

Training Your Veggies Vertically

In cities, people realized they couldn’t expand horizontally anymore, and so downtown and business areas went vertical. Skyscrapers sprang up, offering loads more space than a single-story building. The same idea applies to taking our beans, peas, cukes, and even some squash vertically. 

We’ve talked about some advantages of growing vertically in a previous article, but for peas, beans, cukes, and squashes, it can be a real space saver. It sounds counterintuitive, but for harvest density in small spaces, sometimes the vining plant is the answer, especially with peas and beans. Think of a big patio planter, perhaps 18 or 20 inches in diameter. That pot would only fit three or maybe four bush bean plants, but could easily be home to half a dozen pole beans. Given the space to climb, those pole beans will produce a far greater yield. All that extra leaf area lets them capture more sunlight and turn it into more beans.

Cucumbers, vining peas, and pole beans, in particular, excel at growing vertically and producing tons of produce for harvest. If you’ve ever experienced the garden-takeover of a hill of cucumber plants, you could see how training them vertically can be of huge help in small spaces. 

Not only does growing vertically up a trellis, fence, or even a deck railing save horizontal space, but it also makes the crops easier to harvest. And, the extra airflow can help reduce the risk of disease. 

Find Creative Spots to Grow

You might be looking at the small patch of sun in your backyard and thinking there isn’t enough space to grow all you’d like. If you wish for more space, start exploring alternative ideas. Planting in containers, for instance, can allow you to grow where you might not have thought to before. That sunny strip along the edge of the driveway can easily be home to a pair of large planters and a temporary frame for some peas. The south-facing wall that gets lots of afternoon sun is a great spot for a bean trellis. Even if there are a couple of shrubs there now, you can probably tuck a few plants along the wall and coax them up.

Look for little sunny spots in the yard and put in a planter. Let some zucchini loose between the spirea bushes. Add peas to a windowbox. You might even be able to commandeer a spot in the neighbor’s yard if you offer to share. 

Harvest Frequently

Like deadheading flowers, keeping up with harvesting on your peas, beans, summer squashes, and cucumbers will encourage more production. Plants are attempting to reproduce. The tasty bits we like to eat are part of a reproductive process whose end goal is to make viable seeds to carry on the next generation of plants. 

When we let our peas, green beans, or zucchini go past the prime eating stage and become overmature, the plant continues to spend energy on maturing the seeds inside. But if we interrupt that process by picking the beans or peas when the pods are still tender or harvesting the cucumbers, the plant basically shifts back into flower-and-fruit mode.

Keeping up with the harvest by frequent picking not only provides you with more produce for the kitchen but also signals the plant to produce more.

Resist the Urge to Overcrowd

Many gardening methods can support closer-than-normal plant spacing when the gardener pays close attention to soil quality, moisture, weed pressure, and fertility. But eventually, too many plants in a tight space reduces growth. 

Two healthy squash plants allowed space to grow will outproduce six crowded ones in the same area. It can be tempting to sow a few extra seeds, thinking you’ll get a few more beans. But if they are overcrowded, they won’t thrive, and yields will suffer. 

Overcrowding in small spaces also increases the likelihood of disease problems, especially in squashes and cucumbers, which are often affected by powdery mildew. 

It’s okay to plant a few extra in spring, but remember to thin them out as they get large. If you started with a couple too many and didn’t realize it until the plants got larger, you can tip-prune the vines or thin some foliage. Snipping off the vine's growing tip will reduce its lengthwise growth. Your zucchini plant can have a leaf or two removed and still be fine.